User Guide

with 1007
with
Availability
Flash Player 5.
Usage
with (object:Object) {
statement(s);
}
Parameters
object
An instance of an ActionScript object or movie clip.
statement(s) An action or group of actions enclosed in curly braces ({}).
Returns
Nothing.
Description
Statement; lets you specify an object (such as a movie clip) with the object parameter and
evaluate expressions and actions inside that object with the
statement(s) parameter. This
prevents you from having to repeatedly write the object’s name or the path to the object.
The
object parameter becomes the context in which the properties, variables, and functions in
the
statement(s) parameter are read. For example, if object is my_array, and two of the
properties specified are
length and concat, those properties are automatically read as
my_array.length and my_array.concat. In another example, if object is state.california,
any actions or statements inside the
with statement are called from inside the california
instance.
To find the value of an identifier in the
statement(s) parameter, ActionScript starts at the
beginning of the scope chain specified by the
object and searches for the identifier at each level
of the scope chain, in a specific order.
The scope chain used by the
with statement to resolve identifiers starts with the first item in the
following list and continues to the last item:
• The object specified in the object parameter in the innermost with statement.
• The object specified in the object parameter in the outermost with statement.
• The Activation object. (A temporary object that is automatically created when a function is
called that holds the local variables called in the function.)
• The movie clip that contains the currently executing script.
• The Global object (built-in objects such as Math and String).
To set a variable inside a
with statement, you must have declared the variable outside the with
statement, or you must enter the full path to the Timeline on which you want the variable to live.
If you set a variable in a
with statement without declaring it, the with statement will look for the
value according to the scope chain. If the variable doesn’t already exist, the new value will be set
on the Timeline from which the
with statement was called.
CHAPTER 2
ActionScript Language Reference